Minutes after ticket sales for FlashFest went live Tuesday, Kent State’s third-party ticket vendor website crashed.

Tickets for FlashFest’s Lil Yachty performance and the men’s and women’s basketball postseason tournament games became available for purchase at 5 p.m. A rush of activity on the AudienceView website caused it to stall, creating purchasing issues.

“It is set up to accommodate Kent State athletic teams which rarely have this much demand for an event right at the second that it launches,” said Matt Clark, the director of programming for Undergraduate Student Government which hosts FlashFest. “We anticipated this happening. It happens every year.”

Clark said the website began working again at 5:30 p.m.

Freshman entrepreneurship major Maddie Perkins said she waited on the website 30 minutes before tickets for the Lil Yachty concert went on sale.

“I knew most ticket websites have problems,” Perkins said.

As soon as ticket sales opened at 5 p.m., Perkins lost access to the website.

“I had been sitting on the website for so long being ready for it,” Perkins said, “just for it to sell out or not be available.”

Perkins and other students commented about their purchase complications on the Undergraduate Student Government’s Instagram post announcing tickets going live Tuesday.

Some students said they could not access the website at all, while others said they paid for their ticket but did not receive confirmation of their purchase. Tickets were $20.

“It charged me but I don’t know where to find if I have [a] ticket or not,” one user wrote.

USG responded in the comments telling students to be patient.

“T​​he Kent State ticketing website is not used to this volume of traffic, please be patient and give it time to catch up,” the comment read. “If you are concerned about being charged and haven’t received your ticket, please contact the MACC Box Office [email protected].”

If students think they purchased a ticket but have not received confirmation, Perkins said they should check their account on the website.

“You had to click ‘View Your Tickets’ if you’ve ever bought tickets there,” Perkins said.

This is the second complication AudienceView has experienced with Kent State this year. The vendor had a security breach, which halted ticket sales for the men’s basketball game against Ohio University Feb. 28. People then needed to purchase tickets for the game in person.

Jenna Bal is a campus editor. Contact her at [email protected].